


arrows to the heart

by thisbluespirit



Category: 15th Century CE RPF
Genre: 5 Times, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, The Wars of the Roses, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 17:00:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13058289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: She sends him arrows, always.





	arrows to the heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anabel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anabel/gifts).



_Towton_

Love is an arrow that rarely misses its mark. Margaret knows that full well in both its pain and pleasure, the sport and the many-scarred battles. She has her son, her only joy, whose birth caused her such suffering. Then the Wheel of Fortune turns; she has him not.

She makes the best she can of it: he is well-treated, well-placed. He may be a prisoner, but he is kindly used. The thought gladdens her heart even as it hurts her also. 

She urges Henry to work for the favour of his lord, while she works for the favour of the king, but she must let him go without protest, and so she does. (He is but five; he was only this short while learning his letters at her side. Now he is not.)

She sends him messages, she sends him her prayers – arrows from her heart as she kneels before her prayer book daily. Her hands tremble as she fingers the beads.

She sends him arrows.

* * *

_Edgecote_

She hears word of the battle, but none of her son. She sends out riders to search for him, to search for news of Henry, of where he may be found. (Twelve years now and his first battle, a rout, a massacre; she prays he is not among the dead, her only son, her dear heart. She prays, she prays, she prays.)

He’s well, she hears; he’s safe, though fate and the Kingmaker have taken his guardian. But here’s the thing: she can send out men, she cannot go to him herself.

She sends him arrows and a bow; the hope that he will amuse himself in play and lighten his heart. She knows well, though, how hard to it is to wipe horrors from the mind; plague and pain and loss remain with her. She would give a good portion of her lands and fortune to be able, as his mother, to try, to hold him in her arms, grown as he is.

All she can do is send him arrows.

* * *

_Tewkesbury_

The wheel turns: those that Margaret loves fall, as they rose before. Henry is gone, though she may take comfort that he is with his Uncle Jasper now. (Fourteen, an exile, a prisoner, a pawn in the game.) Her prayers must cross the sea after them both; her words are forbidden to do so.

She has her work to do: the duties of the day, a dying husband to tend, and a future to fear and plan towards. She will send out other missives, find ways to regain the royal favour she has lost – and bring her son home to claim his lands and her brother-in-law with him. Margaret is ever loyal to those she loves, though she never forsakes her duty or devotions, or ceases her daily work.

Despite royal prohibitions, she always finds ways to reach Henry. She would send him a hundred archers to protect him, if she could. For the meantime, she dispatches words, tokens whenever she can, and offers prayers to heaven. She works for their future in every way she can.

She finds a new husband, she finds a new way forward. If she can’t bring Henry and Jasper home, it will never be for lack of trying.

For every possible target she finds, she looses an arrow. Some will find their mark.

* * *

_The Tower_

The darkest time brings the greatest hope. Margaret seizes her chance, much as others have done before her. She makes a deal with Queen Elizabeth – two practised politicians, two mothers who would protect their children – and they plot alike for Henry and Elizabeth, Lancaster and York together, to steal back the throne.

But when she sends the message to Brittany, when she thinks of this venture, she knows she has also sent him a battle to fight: more arrows, this time a thousand or so, all of them aimed at his heart. She has given him death or a crown. Nothing is yet certain. If this fails, it is treason (treason to the king, but keeping faith with her son in exile). Henry may survive across the Channel; she is most like to die, mother of the King’s great rebel and traitor.

Margaret is of a practical nature: she does not waste very much of her life thinking of how things could have been this way or that, instead of what they are, but sometimes she wonders how matters might be if she were not of such great fortune – and could do so much less and so much more for her son.

Now she gives him everything. She gives him this torn country; she sends him a rain of bloody arrows.

* * *

_Bosworth_

My Lady the King’s Mother weeps at his coronation: she has seen too many twists and turns of fate not to fear the next.

And this is surely too much good fortune: her son is with her, her son is the King. She is the first lady in the land, and he the first of all to England now, as he has always been to her. 

He may reward her with what he pleases, and he does, he always will. She may, in private, embrace him at last, tightly, too tightly, and let her heart overflow with happiness so great it crosses into pain. It is a time of reunions and repayments, but that never ceases to be the greatest of all. (He is far taller than she is now; twice the age that last she saw him, but never a stranger. Love is an arrow that never misses its mark and they have never yet been truly parted.) 

Margaret rejoices in the splendour of the occasion, the triumph of her venture, and her son’s, the freedom she has gained for herself and those she loves. But still she fears and lets tears fall even in the sight of others on this auspicious day. 

At such a height, how easy it would be to fall again. She has seen enough turns of fortune’s wheel, too many deaths, and too many kings come and go to rest easy. She fears the trouble to come even as she thanks God for his blessing. (She prays, she prays, she prays.) 

Love is an arrow, and once it strikes the heart, from its wound there is no recovery. That is the key: love is fatal, in the same way that life is fatal. Margaret would not wish it otherwise. Both are worth any pain they bring.

She sends him arrows – her only son, her greatest joy – and he returns the favour.

**Author's Note:**

> I very much hope this treat isn't a little too much on the bittersweet side for you, but I was caught by your prompt about Margaret's reaction to her reunion with Henry & success generally, because she is said to have cried for fear at his coronation, at the birth of Arthur, and at her grandson's coronation: “she never was in that prosperity, but the greter it was, the more alwaye she dredde the adversyte.”
> 
> As to the arrows, after the battle of Edgecote and the death of his guardian, Margaret (or Stafford) sent the twelve year old Henry a bow and some arrows “for his disport." (Building so much on it, of course, is just my fancy!)


End file.
